As a footnote for ME Trilogy Week, a spotlight: One of the saddest lines in Mass Effect 2 is hiding in a throwaway dialogue that almost everyone ignores because the Council's in the middle of pissing you off (again) and there are 50,000 other things happening in Shepard's first trip back to the Citadel.
The Ilos Hologram is no longer functional.
...Vigil was the Protheans' last chance. Aside from Javik who they don't yet know exists, and any remaining hidden data caches, it was the last link to their culture and history.
Two years earlier, talking to Shepard, it can barely form a visual matrix and its audio is slightly distorted. But it's held on for 50,000 years. Since being programmed during the last centuries of the last cycle.
Vigil is the reason Shepard had the info they needed to succeed against Saren and against Sovereign. The reason that the Normandy crew understood the true nature of the threat.
And Shepard just made it, a couple of years before it stopped working forever. 50,000 years active and Shepard only got there in time by less than two years.
And now, that last link to everything the Protheans were...is gone. And that's utterly heartbreaking - but presented in a way that you're never asked to sit with. Because there are bigger problems.
But Liara was right. Vigil was already nearly too far gone. That really was their last chance. And that's tragic as fuck.
